ABSTRACT
One of the archaeological layers of Sigmund Freud's Rome is William Shakespeare's Rome. The ghost of ancient Rome, the dislocation into history of the assassinated Caesar presents itself as at once an uncanny flaneur of revolution and a revenger of - as well as from - the past. Freud has direct recourse to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar on another occasion, and once again his responses and observations are directly germane to the question of the uncanny absent presence of the ghost as a figure for the elusive and desirable idea of Rome. Caesar as ghost, and Caesar as ghost writer, together haunt the precincts of these plays. If, as tradition holds, Shakespeare himself played the Ghost in Hamlet, thus becoming doubly his own ghost writer, we may imagine the ghost of Caesar as another haunting presence on the boundaries and margins of this play.
